Gold Coast Suns back on finals track

Andrew Stafford, Gold Coast

Kade Kolodjashnij and Zac Smith of the Suns leap for a mark. Photo: Getty Images

Gold Coast has had its finals mettle tested in recent weeks with losses to Adelaide, West Coast and Sydney, but Saturday’s 40-point win over Geelong has the club back on track for September.

‘‘It balances out our disappointing loss against West Coast [last week]; if we lost some ground there, we’ve just made it back up,’’ coach Guy McKenna said. ‘‘I’m probably the only one that looks back at our recent history who looks back at that loss and the game against Adelaide where we didn’t play good footy.

‘‘But I’m sure the boys will come away from this weekend saying hey, we just knocked over a modern-day powerhouse of a football club, and get some confidence out of that and take that into [a game against] another powerhouse next week [Hawthorn], and then there’s another powerhouse [Collingwood] waiting for us.

‘‘I think going into next week’s game against Hawthorn [at Launceston], given what they did to us here, I think that’ll be a really good test. We’ve got 10 games to go; we’ve got to treat them like finals and we got to play a finals-type side tonight and we got a result, which is fantastic.

‘‘You’d much prefer to be going into those games on the back of wins rather than losses.’’

Asked about the individual performance of Harley Bennell, McKenna was evasive, preferring to talk about the team’s defensive pressure, a point on which Geelong coach Chris Scott was in agreement: ‘‘Their pressure was really good, and in the slippery conditions we probably overused it a little bit.’’

Asked how Bennell was afforded so much space, Scott said: ‘‘I actually didn’t think he had that much. He came off the bench and kicked one, so he had a bit of space there, but I thought he won the ball in the contest. I didn’t see him running around by himself, I thought he was beating opponents. He’s going to do it for a few years to come.’’